TUSCALOOSA,
Alabama — Remember the good ole days when running backs and receivers lined up
at quarterback?

Once
upon a time the Wildcat offense was all the rage. But, like the Wing-T and the Wishbone,
the Wildcat went the way of the milk man.

Well
Nick Saban was asked about the disappearance
of the Wildcat offense on his weekly radio show Thursday evening.

"But
I think you see more and more quarterbacks playing that run the ball themselves
and if you get that circumstance and that situation, it's the best of both
worlds because there is a threat of a pass," Saban said. "I think the big disadvantage of
Wildcat was the way people started to load the box as soon as you had a
non-quarterback at quarterback.

"You didn't play pass defense and you put
everybody in the box. So even though they created an advantage by having
somebody have to cover the quarterback so that's an extra man on the field, but
you created it because you have nobody playing pass defense.

"So
it became more difficult to create an advantage. Now some of those plays you
ran in Wildcat is what these good running quarterbacks run now in the spread.
So it's still alive, but it's not just non-quarterbacks running it. It's real
quarterbacks."

Saban
also said Arkansas occasionally plays some Wildcat so it might make a cameo in
Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday evening.

Fun
fact: Alabama's 2009 national championship season began with a Wildcat
formation. Mark Ingram took the direct snap to open the first game with
Virginia Tech in the Georgia Dome. The eventual Heisman Trophy winner started
his big season with a three-yard quarterback keeper.